LAMBCHOP – ” Flotus ” Best Albums Of 2016

Posted: December 14, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: Best Albums of 2016, Flotus, Kurt Wagner, Lambchop

lambchop 2016

Now, eight years on, Kurt Wagner has taken on the mantle. It’s mildly surprising, but not shocking –after all, the singer and songwriter has continually pushed the boundaries with Lambchop, the Nashville alt.country group he’s led for almost 30 years. Although it sounds little like their best-known work, such as 2000’s Nixon, FLOTUS has some obvious antecedents – 2012’s Mr M was a slow, sparse, soulful record, while The Diet, the 2015 album by Wagner’s side-project HeCTA, dealt with similar electronic textures.

Is it more surprising that Lambchop head honcho Kurt Wagner embraced auto-tune or that his vision of merging pseudo-ambient slow jams with understated folk songs resulted in one of the year’s coolest listening experiences? Wagner and pals create lazy, hazy sunshine filtered through the faces of the fog on ‘FLOTUS.’ They sandwiching the electro-folk with a couple of epics, including 18-minute closer “The Hustle” which moves in clipped, slow-motion while Wagner murmurs fragmented memories of a wedding, but more importantly, marriage.

The album is bookended by two long, strangely static songs. Opener In Care Of 8675309 is like a cut from Mr M, but with Wagner squeezed through subtle Auto-Tune; The Hustle, meanwhile, closes the album with an 18-minute epic, more Kraftwerk than Kristofferson. “We’ll have sunshine,” calls out Wagner, his voice no longer processed. It’s not only one of Lambchop’s finest songs, it’s one of 2016’s best.

Between these two behemoths, FLOTUS is more manageable. Howe is the kind of melancholic slow jam that James Blake would kill to have written, Writer is echoey and sparse, reminiscent of Bill Callahan’s dub album Have Fun With God, while NIV is still tender despite Wagner’s voice being robotically warped out of all recognition.

FLOTUS could have been a disaster – a Nashville guy pushing 60 trying out the tropes of the young – but Wagner is too canny to fail like that. Instead, he’s borrowed someone else’s palette to paint his own, unique picture. .

Somehow Lambchop are the most adventurous and the most consistent band around, switching everything up to maintain a high level of output over the years. FLOTUS is perhaps their biggest departure, a fantasia of programmed beats and manipulated vocals that elevates rather than obscures Kurt Wagner’s lyrics. Best might be this eighteen-minute epic about dancing to cheeseball ‘70s hits at weddings and finding ever new ways to love someone.

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